Prof. Jonah Onuoha, a don, has called on ECOWAS, African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) to take strategic measures to stop African states from being made vulnerable to the use of foreign mercenaries.
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The don said the use of foreign mercenaries had the capacity to destabilise legitimate governments in Africa.
Onuoha, a professor of International Relations and Head of Political Science Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, expressed this thought in an interview with the media in Abuja.
He decried the use of foreign mercenaries and private armies by some African governments, saying by so doing democracy would in Africa would be threatened
He expressed concern about a situation whereby a number of West African have engaged Wagner mercenary group, which staged a short-lived mutiny in Russia last month, to run their state security affairs, pondering their future.
Wagner is a well-known private army that provides security muscle for governments in the Central African Republic and Mali respectively.
Recently the United States imposed sanctions on three Malian officials, including the defence minister, accusing them of making their people vulnerable to Wagner’s “destabilising activities and human rights abuses” while helping it fund its operations in Ukraine.
In May, the military leader of Burkina Faso rejected an accusation by the president of neighbouring Ghana that it too had hired Russian mercenaries.
According to him, the use of mercenaries is not only peculiar to French-speaking countries, but has become a global trend such that states now do not trust their military anymore.
Onuoha said, “The struggle is not going to be easy for any sovereign state. It is an issue that ECOWAS, AU, UN should start thinking about seriously.
“Sovereign states will not be able to contain private armies in Africa. It is difficult for sovereign states to contain activities of private armies, many of them are sponsored from outside.
“It is the duty of international organisations to sit down and begin to find out how to contain the issue at the regional and continental level.
“ECOWAS must have a meeting, call member states to order and find a way to contain the use of private armies across Africa.
”UN must do so globally; AU must do so for Africa because these armies are getting stronger than the soveriegn states and then, if something happens, anytime they want to take over government, they will take over.”
He added: “Why look outside when your country is in trouble?
“There is the need for regional bodies to sit round the table and find ways to contain their excesses, otherwise private armies will be the bane of security in the next five to ten years.”
Onuoha, who is also the Director of the Centre for American Studies, and the pioneer President of Abia Forum Nsukka (AFN) said that private armies were capable of toppling any government where discord ensues between them and their employers.
“What is happening in Africa is condemnable.
“In most cases you find that governments that are supposed to be fighting militancy or private armies end up cooperating with them because they cannot defeat them.
“They cooperate with them and use them to cause confusion and to punish their real or imagined enemies, or even win elections and these private armies get stronger and stronger, which is wrong.”
